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July 31, 2007
Plant a Wasp Garden!
It seems that everyone that plants flowers thinks about the butterflies, so I usually see "Butterfly Garden" whenever a gardener has flowering plants like Echinacea, Mountain-mint, bone-set, carrot, etc. However, what I see most often at the flowers in my yard and elsewhere are bees and wasps at the flowers. The Butterfly Bush in my yard is most attractive to butterflies and hummingbird sphinx moths, and is the most reliable attractant for Lepidoptera. However, any flowers with shallow corollas such as members of the daisy family, carrot family, and mints, will attract a great many bees and wasps, as well as flies. I think they are by far, a lot more interesting to watch than the butterflies that are infrequent visitors.
A Philanthus wasp drinks nectar from Mountain Mint at the flower garden in front of the Ruthven Museum.
These smaller insects are obviously more of a challenge to observe than butterflies, but they are less wary of people, and you can approach them much more closely. For the most part, the wasps at the flowers are deriving their energy source from the nectar. Although many of them are predators, they use the insects that they paralyze (if they are sphecid wasps, that is) as food for their offspring, not themselves. If you want a good read about the lives of wasps and bees, I highly recommend the book by the late Howard Evans, called Wasp Farm. I avidly read the books by Howard Evans when I was an undergraduate, and his writings influenced the direction of my graduate work on solitary wasps, as well as the many papers that I published on their behavior and distribution. The wonderful thing about observing these wasps is that if you find where they are digging their nests, you will be treated to an amazing show of a variety of insect behaviors, including male lekking, attacks by parasitic flies, female nest recognitions, etc. My friend Julie has taken to observing the giant Cicada Killers at her workplace, and has a nice post on her blog.
Isodontia elegans on parsley flowers.
Megachile on Rudbeckia flower.
Potter wasp (Eumenes) on mountain mint.
So, if you want to see a lot of insect action, plant a wasp garden. Species of perennials that are recommended are:
Mountain Mint, Queen-Anne's Lace, Parsely, Golden Alexanders, Globe Thistle, Butterfly Weed, Swamp Milkweed, Boneset, Rudbeckia, Rattle Snake Master (Eryngium), Chives, Lemon Balm, Bee-balm, and Yarrow. More information on plants is here.
Posted by mfobrien at July 31, 2007 09:45 AM